English author uncovers tales in World Cup chronicle

Every four years, books about all things soccer land on my desk like a string of cascading shots from inside the penalty area.

Academic books, explaining the cultural phenomenon of the world’s most popular sport. Historical books, profiling the best-known players or moments through more than a century of competition. Trivia books, filled with tantalizing nibbles about the game.

Over the years, perhaps three books have resonated with me the most:

Nick Hornby’s “Fever Pitch, a Fan’s Life,” is an autobiographical sketch of the author’s love affair with English club Arsenal.

Franklin Foer’s “How Soccer Explains the World: the Unlikely Theory of Globalization,” is an ambitious attempt to highlight soccer’s relationship with political and cultural undercurrents of different countries.

“Outcasts United: An American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman’s Quest to make a Difference,” is Warren St. John’s look at what the sport can do to unite people.

Now comes English journalist James Montague’s “Thirty One Nil: On the road with football’s outsiders: a World Cup odyssey.”

The title might be long but the prose is as nimble as Maradona dribbling through English defenders.

Montague, 34, has gone to great lengths, putting it mildly, to flesh out tales of the forgotten and woebegone teams of soccer-poor nations.

He traversed the globe in search of meaty material, often venturing into hot zones to bare witness to the passion and sheer audacity of men trying to advance to the 2014 World Cup final.

It’s like trying to cover a miracle that won’t ever happen.

Not in earthquake-shattered Haiti. Not in stateless Palestine, war-torn Afghanistan nor desolate Eritrea. Definitely not in American Samoa, which suffers the distinction of having lost a 2001 qualifying match 31-0, the inspiration for the book’s title.

Montague never loses sight of his goal: To tell a montage of insightful tale draped around soccer. As a result, it is tightly knit chronicle despite crisscrossing the globe with ambitions of distilling complex political conditions through a universal prism of sport.

Montague and I chatted before he departed for Brazil with a notebook, a bottle of vinegar (takes the sting of tear gas out of the eyes) and a gas mask. He was at his parents’ home in Essex, north of London, not sure where he would land after the World Cup ends.

The three-year project began when Montague watched incredulously in 2009 as the Egyptian press reported a false story about Alergia regarding an incident before a 2010 World Cup qualifying game in Cairo. The Algerian team bus had been attacked, injuring some players. As Montague writes, it was reported as fact that the Algerians injured themselves to create a controversy.

“I watched as this kind of police state lied to its people very shamefacedly,” the author said. “Everybody believed this thing.”

The journalist in him sent Montague searching for more such stories.

Here is an edited version of our recent conversation:

Question: James, did you have an overarching goal with this book?

Answer: I wanted to tell the story of the world in three years.

When I saw these stories, I saw how the politics are reflected almost perfectly in the local league and the national team. You can actually distill it and tell a story as complicated as Lebanon quite easily through its football league. That’s how you reach people.

It was an epiphany that you can use football in this way, a sport I loved since I can remember. And as scary as some parts are, how human the people are. Through football there is a common thread throughout the world.

I don’t want it to be seen as a football book. I’ve always given it to people who don’t like football. I want it to be a travel book, but it just happens to be around football.

Q: To tell the story right, to get to the heart of it, you had to travel into some so-called “hot zones.” Tell us about it.

A: Luckily, all my toes and fingers and eyes are intact.

I don’t know what damage my lungs have taken. I was tear gassed four times.

There were some terrifying times. The scariest I’ve been was in Haiti. I knew the Arab world intimately. Going to Haiti was like stepping onto the moon. I’ve never been to a place that seemed so beyond repair and hopeless — and that scared me. I’ve been able to see the hope in things, even in Iraq in 2007, that was lacking in Haiti.

Also, Hungary-Romania is one that scared me massively. It is one thing about the violence of war, which has some kind of rules. The violence of football has none. I felt more scared in Bucharest during this match than any other time. (Note: Instead of watching the World Cup qualifying match between hated Central European rivals in the safety of a bar, Montague joined a mob at the stadium’s gate).

And then the protests in Rio and Belo Horizonte (during the 2013 Confederations Cup). I’ve seen the police violence up close. A lot of villainy and carnage.

Q: How does one figure out such extensive travel on a shoestring budget?

A: I didn’t plan too much. With journalism today, if you sit home at your desk and write stuff you miss 90 percent of the story. If you miss 90 percent of the story then you’re the same as everybody else who is losing their job in journalism. The only thing that differentiates you is your experience. It’s the only thing that you’ve got that could be worth something to a reader.

Q: Was there any one place that surprised you?

A: Every place I went to shocked me. A lot of places I was going to for the first time. You have a stereotype. Rwanda, for example. It is synonymous with one of the worst chapters in human history. So, you know about the genocide and Paul Kagame, this president who has created this economic and social miracle where there is safety and security. Tony Blair and others called him the greatest African leader of his generation. And then you get there you find it’s like the Stepford wives. Nobody wants to talk about it. It’s like it never happened. Any dissent is crushed. Then there was this moment outside the football ground with a line of people. You see amputees everywhere, these ghosts everywhere walking around. They ask and beg, can I stand here? Nobody speaks with them. It’s as if acknowledging their presence, their plight, would blow the whole lid off the thing and there would be another million dead. It was like a police state without need for the police. A dictatorship of the mind.

Q: Academics sometimes try to equate soccer with the world at large. What’s your view?

A: What football does, it is a fantastic sponge for society. It is a bellwether for society. If you have a violent society you will find violence in football as well. The nerve it touches on is the same nerve that we find with war or nationalism. That is why dictators are drawn to football.

Q: You’re about to head to Brazil again. Give us your impressions on a country that is going to play host to the World Cup and then the Summer Olympics.

A: I was at protests with 300,000 people (in 2013). If anything it has gotten worst. A lot of cities have cut infrastructure projects to make sure the stadiums get done on time. The miles of metro system, new airports, things tangibly that taxpayers paid for, now aren’t being done. It is more embarrassing than a year ago. I will be surprised if there isn’t bigger protests than a year ago. They will shoot rubber bullets into a crowd. They don’t care if the world’s media is watching.

Q: I have to ask you a football question. Our audience will want to hear your thoughts on Jurgen Klinsmann’s team.

A: It’s very strange thinking of the U.S. as the ultimate underdog as any team in any other group. If they get out, it will be an incredible spectacle to be in an American city when they do it. It will cement the huge gains the sport has made in the country. The best they can hope for is five points.

Other books worth noting:

–”2014 World Cup Survival Guide” by Bay Area journalist John Beck. The handy pocket-size book offers a nicely organized list of the games, where to watch them locally and some trivia. (It can be found at Bay Area bookstores such as Books Inc., Book Passage, Green Apple Books, Diesel Books and Moe’s).

–”Futbol! Why Soccer Matters in Latin America” by Joshua H. Nadel. The North Carolina Central professor provides an historical context to soccer’s growth and significance in South America, Honduras and Mexico.

Elliott Almond

I am the soccer, Olympics and college sports reporter for the San Jose Mercury News. The Sochi Games were my 11th Olympics. I have covered MLS and the San Jose Earthquakes since 2008. I covered FIFA at the 1994 World Cup for the Los Angeles Times. I also am the author of Surfing, Mastering Waves from Basic to Intermediate. Having spent a lot of time in Patagonia I like South American futbol, especially Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.